Bungie Dev: Second Hand Market Is Unfair
Over recent years, the second-hand market has been under heavy criticism from game studios and publishers and has seen a rise in DRM and digital-distribution designed to combat it.
The latest criticism comes from Marty O’Donnell, Bungie Studio’s audio director, who says that the second hand market is unfair.
Complaining about sales when you have a multi-million seller is somewhat difficult to justify, but it seems to me that the folks who create and publish a game shouldn’t stop receiving income from further sales.
It will be harder for smaller titles to be successful in the future if they can’t fully realise a return on investment,
It’s something we have heard time and time again, and is wrong. If I pay £44 for Halo 3, then the game has been deemed worth £44 by those selling it. This is where the studio makes its profit. To then suggest that if I want to sell that game on, after already paying the amount of money wanted, that the publisher should be paid again is ridiculous. Where did the extra worth of the game come from?
If I sell the game on, there are still the same number of people playing that copy of the game. Continuing their argument that they should make a profit each time, what about when somebody else wants to play my copy on my console? Should we pay for each user? What about those enjoying it for longer, should they pay more? Perhaps game companies would be happier with a charge for every man-hour of fun had?
Eventually, digital distribution is probably going to be the way most people purchase content and hopefully developers, publishers, and retailers will figure out a system that is good and fair for both the consumer and the creators of that content.
That’s called renting. It’s what happens with downloadable content on consoles, or DRM-ridden PC games. If you can’t sell the title on, then you are effectively renting the title for as long as you want it.
You simply can not charge the full price of a game, and expect to not give the individual the entire thing, this includes the ability to sell the game on to recoup some of the original price. If I buy a sandwich, eat half of it and then give the rest to a friend in exchange for a small cookie (for sake of argument, it’s chocolate chip). If I then gave some of the cookie to the person I bought the sandwich from, it would be daft.
Modern game companies just can’t seem to understand the idea that when you sell something, it doesn’t belong to you any more. Just because a studio or publisher isn’t making money from one aspect of gaming, doesn’t mean they should.
no offense to bungie (/end sarcasm) but, the first hand market is incredibly unfair to us, so fuck yourselves.
I listened to an recent episode of the CAGCast (not sure which one, as finding old shows on that site seems needlessly complicated), and they made a really good point on this in defense of developers and publishers.
What it really boils down to is lost revenue, which I think I can all agree on. But I can’t really think of many (if any) other products where the a used copy will typically sell for 75-90% of the price of a new copy(sometimes even more). Typically you’d be looking at 60% at the very most, quite often less than that. So, a lot people and businesses (which is what I think devs/publishers are talking about when they say things like this) are making a lot of money that the devs/publishers are missing out on.
The second thing that you really don’t see with other products is many retail outlets who are supposed to be assisting devs/publishers in selling their new product actually competing with them by selling used product at the same time. I mean, if you go into EBGames/Gamestop or any other store that deals in both new and used games and try to buy a new game, guaranteed if they have a used copy they’ll try to push that on you instead. Game companies actually spend money to help dress up these stores with displays and whatnots, and then the stores go and discourage people from buying their product in favour of their own.
So, thinking about it this way I can somewhat see where game companies are coming from. The way I see it is it’s less them having a problem with us reselling games, and more a problem with companies who completely screw us over with their buy/sell prices for used games and make a shitton of money in the process.
They could offer there products at more reasonable price to make the used item less enticing. Whether used or rented, as a consumer, shouldn’t we feel cheated when a $60 game last a single weekend? How then are we rewarded for our investment? With the distinct privilege of purchasing more over priced content to extend the life of a too short game. Instead of decrying lost revenue to used, renters and pirates, game developers should be focusing on offer the consumer a better reason to buy and keep new games. Why should we be stuck storing a game that only lasted a couple of days? Used game resellers offer the consumer a valuable service, to recoup value and extend our dollar beyond a used up resource.